Course 2024-2025 a.y.

The course is in two parts: historical foundations, then contemporary foundations and cases. Details are gi2ven at the end of the syllabus but let me give you a summary sense of the content here.

            In the first four sessions, historical foundations, I lay out an understanding of social networks from two classic studies, Emile Durkheim’s analysis of social factors in suicide, and Stanley Milgram’s analysis of cruelty by people in an agentic state.

            The contemporary foundations sessions are a broad review of research in the last three decades. I will lecture from seven handouts containing argument and evidence. You can download the handouts from my teaching website at www.ronaldsburt.com.

            I’ll begin with top-line growth: How are open networks associated with individual creativity and success in terms of more positive work evaluations, higher compensation, recognition of leaders, and faster promotion to leadership positions?

            I then discuss how closed networks are associated with personal reputation and team efficiency in terms of faster, higher-quality production. The closed networks associated with comfort and efficiency are also associated with gossip-enforced stereotypes and abuse. We look into witch hunts and diversity issues, ending in session eight with a network strategy to rigorously identify and correct such problems.

            The ninth session is a group project in which you join with two or three colleagues to produce a network map of senior management in a large EU company. We’ll use the free software, NetDraw, and you can download the network data from my teaching website. I include this session because I want you to leave the course with at least the one technical skill of being able to produce and interpret a network map. I use a team format for the exercise to allow for some people having less developed data skills.

            The final three sessions turn to more complicated issues. In session ten, I discuss the jealousy and feelings of inadequacy that can arise in closed networks. In session 11, I describe how people find a balance between the creativity and growth of open networks versus the efficiency and rigidity of closed networks. In the final session, on cases, I use video and lecture to describe some often-discussed examples of people who have used the network principles well (and sometimes not so well).

·      Have better-developed skills in reading and drawing conclusions from social science evidence.

·      Have sufficient technical skill to read and generate a network map.

·      Distinguish people who have a relatively closed or open network.

·      Understand the network foundations for public opinion and personal reputation.

·      Understand how closed networks make people feel comfortable and create operational efficiency, at the same time that they foster a cult environment prone to abuse and cruelty toward outsiders.

Understand how open networks enhance growth and achievement through creativity and innovation.

·      Have sufficient technical skill to read and generate a network map.

·      Distinguish people who have a relatively closed or open network.

• Lectures
• Practical Exercises
• Individual works / Assignments
• Collaborative Works / Assignments

• The learning experience combines three elements: face-to-face lectures, case discussion of a variety of real examples, and classroom debate helping students to explore different perspectives when assessing a variety of manager strategies. In this way, students learn from real world examples (successful and unsuccessful), about how concepts of networks and relationships shape and influence careers. The course is taught in an interactive style to create an active learning environment. Class participation is strongly recommended.
• As we cover sections, short quizzes will be used to highlight key concepts and principles for the subsequent class sessions. Some questions from the quizzes will appear on the multiple-choice final exam tying together key learning points in the course. A student’s two best quiz scores will be included with the final exam score in the overall student assessment (see next section).
• Midway through the course, students do a team project using data on networks and leadership in a real organization. This is an opportunity to learn how to do the computer analyses on which the course material is based and used in so much of contemporary management and business consulting. The purpose is to provide hands-on experience for students with computer skills, and an opportunity for students with weaker computer skills to contribute to interpreting results. A written report is part of the overall student assessment (see next section).

• Toward the end of the course, students submit a short individual reflection paper on two questions: What did you learn in the course that you expected to learn? What did you learn in the course that you did not expect to learn. The reflection paper is an opportunity, just before the exam, to shift through the course material for topics the student knows particularly well and topics that were a surprise. These are also an opportunity for the course instructor to monitor aspects of the course that might benefit from elaboration in class. The assignment is part of the overall student assessment (see next section).

The status of attending student will be granted based on simultaneous satisfaction of three conditions: (1) the average grade on two best individual written assignments should be a passing grade, (2) participation in a group project, and (3) attendance at 75% of class sessions. Attendance is mandatory and will be recorded through the Bocconi online procedure. The following are the grade components for attending students:

·      20%    Class participation. Research shows that participation in the course significantly improves the career benefit (covered in the handout for session six).  You are expected to participate in class discussion of concepts, evidence, and illustrative cases. I encourage you to contribute to class discussion throughout the course with clarifying questions, personal experiences related to the class material, and critical evaluations of arguments or evidence under discussion.  Constructively evaluate positions taken by your classmates.  It is not likely that everyone will participate in a significant way in every case discussion.  Nevertheless, you are expected to be able to participate.  I will cold call on students in class. 

·      15%    Two best of four quizzes. Four short quizzes will occur in class. If you do all four, I only include your two best in your quiz grade. If you do two of the four, those two define your quiz grade. If you only do one, your grade is the average of a zero and whatever score you received on the one you did.

·      10%    Individual Reflection Assignment. The group report is due on or before the scheduled exam session. The assignment should be no more than two pages in length (single-spaced, Arial 12 font). I stop reading at the end of the second page. The assignment is your answer to two questions: What did you learn in the course that you expected to learn? What did you learn in the course that you did not expect to learn?

·      15%    Group project. Together with two or three classmates, you will spend session seven generating and analyzing a network map of senior management in a leading EU company. Analysis and writing are likely to continue past the session, but you should be able to make good progress within the session. We will use the free mapping software, NetDraw. I will provide the management data. The group report is due on or before the scheduled exam session. The report contains your answers to three questions about the company: What is the network structure of the company’s management? Are company managers rewarded for brokerage activity? Is there a gender diversity problem in the company? The report should be no more than two pages in length (single-spaced, Arial 12 font). I stop reading at the end of the second page. I will offer more details before we reach session seven.

·      40%    Final exam. This will be a multiple-choice exam held during the exam period as scheduled by Bocconi staff.

Assessment of non-attending students will be based on a multiple-choice final exam at the end of the course. The exam will cover the two classic studies on which the first four lectures are based, and the three overviews from which most of the subsequent class sessions are drawn:

·      Emile Durkheim (1951) [1897], Suicide: A Study in Sociology, translated by John Spaulding and George Simpson. (We’ll use the Routledge Classic edition, published in 2002.)

·      Stanley Milgram (1974), Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. Harper & Row. (We’ll use the Harper Perennial Modern Thought edition, published in 2009.)

·      Ronald Burt (2005), Brokerage and Closure: An Introduction to Social Capital. Oxford University Press. 

·      Ronald Burt (2010), Neighbor Networks: Competitive Advantage Local and Personal. Oxford University Press. 

Ronald Burt (2021), “Structural holes: Capstone, Cautions, and Enthusiasms,” in Mario Small et al. (eds.), Personal Networks: Classic Readings and New Directions in Egocentric Analysis. Cambridge University Press. (A preprint copy can be downloaded for free from my research page.)

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